Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is post great content consistently to automatically start attracting traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We explain why an expertly configured site is different. You will also learn what kind of work is required to make sure that when all is set up and fully configured, you can automatically start attracting visitors when you start to add new content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide and businesses are researching any and every opportunity they can to improve their performance online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
The Configuration Process Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take extra labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything is moving along in the gizmo-making plant when all of a sudden, things comes to a stop.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without uttering a word, walks straight towards the control box. After staring at the schematics for 5 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy little hammer and makes a very gentle tap about 1 cm from the left edge of the unit.
Immediately, the assembly line returns once more to normal.
The plant manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives a request of payment for services rendered totalling $5,000.
Unable to hide his anger and bewilderment, the manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to be compensated fairly for spending years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress website set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networks and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While experts often make complex situations and problems look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than just installing a website and configuring a few settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to get certain outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that things will work to plan, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a piece of software, configuring some settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many parts including your web server, your website, and various third-party sites and online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.
Integration With External Web Properties
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all of your content is published to a central location (your site) and from there, it syndicates automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your traffic network, content linked back to your site is automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social networks, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and business will benefit from exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your WordPress site’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account and site details with Google Webmaster Tools are set up, this information can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, you can add your account code to all of your pages in WordPress via plugins and feed data instantly to many other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account, you can use this information with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, your WordPress administration area includes a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically notify various update services whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your articles, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up WordPress permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is immune from cyber attacks.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving your website’s ability to rank better in search engines)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring Settings – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your website, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure options and settings for better traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your options and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Configuration Areas For WordPress Sites
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Categories & Tags
WordPress tags and post categories help search engines index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress categories help search engines index your pages, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Phase.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps provide users with a an understandable representation of how your content is structured, while XML sitemaps are code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Another Source Of Web Traffic!
When online visitors enter the wrong URL or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they are presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Error Page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to attract new web traffic is publish content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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